Another week of games in the books. Time to open up voting for this week's poll. Submissions are due by 6pm Central on Thursday, Nov. 7th I'll work to get the results posts prior to the start of the Oklahoma-Baylor game. Here's how last week's poll fared:

Team Rec. Weekend Result
1. Alabama 8-0 Bye
2. Oregon 8-0 Bye
3. Florida State 8-0 beat #6 Miami 41-14
4. Ohio State 9-0 beat Purdue 56-0
5. Baylor 7-0 Bye
6. Miami, FL 7-1 lost to #3 Florida State 41-14
7. Stanford 7-1 Bye
8. Missouri 8-1 beat Tennessee 31-3
9. Clemson 8-1 beat Virginia 59-10
10. Auburn 8-1 beat Arkansas 35-17
11. Oklahoma 7-1 Bye
12. LSU 7-2 Bye
13. Texas A&M 7-2 beat UTEP 57-7
14. South Carolina 7-2 beat Mississippi State 34-16
15. Texas Tech 7-2 lost to #16 Oklahoma State 52-34
16. Oklahoma State 7-1 beat #15 Texas Tech 52-34
T17. Fresno State 8-0 beat Nevada 41-23
T17. Louisville 7-1 Bye
19. Michigan 6-2 lost to Michigan State 29-6
20. Northern Illinois 9-0 beat Massachusetts 63-19
21. Central Florida 6-1 Bye
22. UCLA 6-2 beat Colorado 45-23
23. BYU 6-2 Bye
T24. Arizona State 6-2 beat Washington State 55-21
T24. Wisconsin 6-2 beat Iowa 28-9

1. Alabama (1)
2. FSU (2)
3. Oregon (3)
4. Ohio State (4)
5. Stanford (6)
6. Baylor (7)
7. Oklahoma (8)
8. Clemson (9)
9. Auburn (10)
10. Texas A&M (11)
11. Missouri (13)
12. Miami (5)
13. South Carolina (15)
14. Oklahoma State (14)
15. Louisville (16)
16. LSU (17)
17. Fresno State (18)
18. UCLA (19)
19. Northern Illinois (20)
20. Wisconsin (21)
21. Michigan State (22)
22. Arizona State (25)
23. Texas Tech (12)
24. Ole Miss (24)
25. Minnesota (23)


Dropped Out This Week: None

from Jon's Three Cents | Because two cents worth isn't always enough (http://jonsthreecents.wordpress.com/)

1. Florida State (3)
2. Oregon (1)
3. Alabama (2)
4. Missouri (4)
5. Arizona State (7)
6. Baylor (5)
7. Stanford (6)
8. Brigham Young (8)
9. Clemson (13)
10. Ohio State (10)
11. Georgia (14)
12. South Carolina (15)
13. Louisiana State (11)
14. Texas A&M (9)
15. Wisconsin (18)
16. Auburn (16)
17. Miami (FL) (12)
18. Oklahoma State (20)
19. UCLA (24)
20. Florida (17)
21. Washington (19)
22. Southern California (NR)
23. Louisville (NR)
24. Georgia Tech (23)
25. Mississippi (25)

Dropped out: Arizona, Oklahoma

1. Alabama (1)
2. Oregon (2)
3. Florida State (3)
4. Ohio State (4)
5. Baylor (5)
6. Stanford (7)
7. Clemson (8)
8. Auburn (9)
9. Oklahoma (10)
10. Missouri (11)
11. Oklahoma State (14)
12. Fresno State (12)
13. Miami (6)
14. LSU (15)
15. Texas A&M (16)
16. Northern Illinois (17)
17. Central Florida (18)
18. Louisville (19)
19. South Carolina (20)
20. UCLA (22)
21. Notre Dame (23)
22. Michigan State (24)
23. Arizona State (25)
24. Texas Tech (13)
25. Wisconsin (NR)

Dropped out: Michigan (21)

Nice, brit. If Wisconsin wins Saturday they'll get a nice bump beating BYU. Any chance you can figure out with your formula if Wisconsin had beaten ASU?

I'm interested in where the love for Northern Illinois and Fresno State, two teams playing bottom five schedules in the FBS, comes from.

Fresno State's only opponent this season that will even be in the top half of the FBS was Boise State. And that was a one-point win at home where the Bulldogs were outgained. Boise State hasn't played well away from its blue-field advantage and is 2-3 on the road. My system has Fresno State 30th and Boise State 55th.

Northern Illinois is 38th. At least the Huskies have one win - at Iowa (45th) - that would be considered quality in a BCS conference. They were outgained, but won by three and had +2 in turnovers. It wasn't a cheap win, but the rest of the Husky schedule has been somewhere between awful and nonexistent. It's the weakest schedule overall in the FBS. They do model a very successful team statistically, so that probably keeps them in my top 50.

My system isn't perfect, and I would never make any claim that it's better than the other systems out there. It takes several statistics from each game, correlating them to winning percentage. It also makes comparisons involving every game. Sometimes it creates situations where the eyeball test fails. Michigan, for example, remains in the top 25 - probably due to its outlier results against Minnesota and Notre Dame. I don't think Michigan is better than Michigan State. But the system is based on sound theory, and the fine-tuning with statistics has greatly increased its accuracy (I used to get about 70% winners across all intra-FBS games, now I get 73-75%).

But it definitely seems wrong that the polls reward these unbeaten teams that may have one danger game on the entire schedule. The top ten teams in the SEC would probably go undefeated if they had one semi-big game to get up for, a couple of minor challenges and nine gimmes.

Overall, a football season is a complex combination of often contradictory results. Especially since the home-field advantage is very pronounced in college football. The Michigan team that beat Notre Dame is the same team that should have lost to a terrible Connecticut team a couple of weeks later. Every result needs to be examined and assessed when compiling a rating. That's where the computer has the advantage.

The ideal system combines computer with eyeball. Or finds a way to drive out all the noise in the statistical data. I'm not anywhere near there yet.

I'm interested in where the love for Northern Illinois and Fresno State, two teams playing bottom five schedules in the FBS, comes from.

Goes back, quite possibly, to what it is the polls are trying to rank (which is a topic that has been discussed here in the past IIRC)

For my own submissions it's combination of how good I believe the teams are and how good a season they've had to date. An imprecise combination of those at that.

I looked back at my rankings for this week, about the only concern I've got about where I put FS and NIU is that I actually have a feeling that NIU might be more capable of pulling off an upset of a better team than FS has. But I can't quite get myself to get them flipped (likely because I haven't seen much of Fresno St and am relying on their record more).

I haven't seen your list for the week yet but IIRC it has Georgia Tech in the top 25 somewhere. I'm supremely confident that either of those teams would pound Tech, a team that hasn't beaten anyone better than UNC all year & was thoroughly dealt with by both BYU and Miami. ANY team worth more than half a damn would flatten the Jackets tbh.

edit to add: As I commented recently (on one of my weekly podcasts IIRC) and have noted for the past several years, at some point there not much difference at all between all the also-rans. The number of legitimately darned good teams is well smaller than 25.

Goes back, quite possibly, to what it is the polls are trying to rank (which is a topic that has been discussed here in the past IIRC)

For my own submissions it's combination of how good I believe the teams are and how good a season they've had to date. An imprecise combination of those at that.

I looked back at my rankings for this week, about the only concern I've got about where I put FS and NIU is that I actually have a feeling that NIU might be more capable of pulling off an upset of a better team than FS has. But I can't quite get myself to get them flipped (likely because I haven't seen much of Fresno St and am relying on their record more).

I haven't seen your list for the week yet but IIRC it has Georgia Tech in the top 25 somewhere. I'm supremely confident that either of those teams would pound Tech, a team that hasn't beaten anyone better than UNC all year & was thoroughly dealt with by both BYU and Miami. ANY team worth more than half a damn would flatten the Jackets tbh.

edit to add: As I commented recently (on one of my weekly podcasts IIRC) and have noted for the past several years, at some point there not much difference at all between all the also-rans. The number of legitimately darned good teams is well smaller than 25.

Georgia Tech remains at 25 in my system. I know you're supremely confident about this, but the fact remains that neither of those unbeaten teams has proven anything to date.

I feel fairly (not supremely) confident that Fresno State and Northern Illinois would fail to reach .500 if they played in the ACC. Did Gary Patterson suddenly start sucking when TCU joined the Big Twelve? Did Kyle Whittingham suddenly forget how to coach when Utah joined the Pac Twelve. Both teams are 1-4 in conference, now that they have far fewer gimmes. A real schedule wears teams down.

The Yellowjackets have solid stats - they weren't out of the BYU game except for a couple of untimely turnovers. I think it's a reasonable ranking. A better one than Michigan at 20.

What's a darned good team? How do we know this when nobody plays all that many top 25 teams and schedules are so widely variant? After Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and maybe Ohio State, what can we say with reasonable confidence?

Georgia Tech remains at 25 in my system. I know you're supremely confident about this, but the fact remains that neither of those unbeaten teams has proven anything to date.

Goes back to the eyeball test though ... neither of them have proven how badly they can suck. GT has :( (to my considerable chagrin)

I feel fairly (not supremely) confident that Fresno State and Northern Illinois would fail to reach .500 if they played in the ACC.

Eh, comes down to schedule on that most likely. And maybe whether we're talking about this season or longer term. I mean, GT is going to finish 5-3 in the conference and they're stupendously mediocre at best. Someone from the BC/Syracuse/Maryland trio is likely to finish .500. I don't believe any of those teams are particularly better than the two in question. They may not be considerably worse, but I've seen nothing to suggest they're considerably better.

The Yellowjackets have solid stats - they weren't out of the BYU game except for a couple of untimely turnovers. I think it's a reasonable ranking. A better one than Michigan at 20.

Hey, don't look at me, I haven't had Michigan ranked since they lost to Penn State ;)

What's a darned good team?

Once again, the eyeball test answers that question. There a tiny sliver of good/very good teams (you basically named 'em), then a group of pretty good teams, and then a whole bunch of meh that leads a smaller group of dear-Lord-please-just-drop-football teams. It's what happens when you attempt to reach parity, with scholarship limits & more teams with more TV coverage (creating more opportunities for kids who want to "be a star" to choose to go elsewhere).

25. Minnesota (23)


:banghead: Stupid backwards pass!

Here's the Top 25 from Solecismic's Football Frontier:

1. Florida State
2. Oregon
3. Alabama
4. Missouri
5. Ohio State
6. Baylor
7. Stanford
8. Oklahoma
9. Clemson
10. Auburn
11. Miami, FL
12. Arizona State
13. South Carolina
14. BYU
15. Wisconsin
16. Oklahoma State
17. Georgia
18. LSU
19. Washington
20. Michigan
21. Arizona
22. Mississippi
23. Louisville
24. Central Florida
25. Georgia Tech

:banghead: Stupid backwards pass!

LOL. I was not particularly impressed by their Saturday performance but it's hard for me to justify dropping them any further ... with the theory being that I didn't punish Miami (for example) harshly for near misses, how can I punish Minnesota particularly hard for their near miss?

I want to expand on this a bit because I'm feeling verbose today (well, I feel verbose many days, but today I feel like there are better stories out there than Richie Incognito and his foul little life).

There are very few coaches out there who truly get a lot out of tape. For the most part, coaches have a solid general understanding of positional responsibilities and can quickly identify what a team will look like.

The decent coaches can use that information (or have it fed to them by their assistants) to craft a game plan from all the plays in their playbooks that has a decent chance of success.

The better-than-decent coaches can teach that game plan during the week.

But the great coaches, and they number few and far between - even at the NFL level - can look at tape and see things that we'll never see. We can only guess.

For example, when Michigan got abused by Michigan State on Saturday, generally, Michigan has some expected advantages. On paper, they're fairly equivalent teams. If you add up pluses and minuses or have some sort of statistical or scouting system, you might give Michigan a tiny advantage.

But, what Brady Hoke failed to see was that one element of game simply didn't work. Michigan State's defensive front could absolutely steamroll Michigan's interior line. Mark Dantonio was able to send out defensive packages that collapsed the pocket and Michigan's quarterback couldn't adjust.

That matchup changed the game from relatively even to a blowout. Michigan couldn't improve bad field position. The defense eventually broke down with the consistently short field and no rest.

Dantonio or Pat Narduzzi (who will get a nice promotion somewhere next year) saw something in the Michigan tapes that clicked for them. Most of the time, coaches can't anticipate what little thing will end up consuming the game. Maybe it's as small as a cornerback who can't cover the fly against bigger receivers and a good outside-shoulder throw. A case where the corner has been perfectly fine all season, but there, you see it on one play in the tape, and you know your particular wide receiver will get open 2-3 times for big plays if you can just draw the safeties away.

That's why football is so tough to predict. Ideally, I think I can get to 80-85% predicting college football if I can tune out the noise in all that data out there. But there's still a huge percentage we can't get, not knowing for certain how those little games within the game will play out.

And that's why Northern Illinois can look so dominating against bad competition, but we really don't what will happen once that quarterback takes a few good hits, and plays a defense that can take advantage of real differences in skill sets elsewhere.

1. Alabama
2. Oregon
3. Florida State
4. Ohio State
5. Baylor
6. Fresno State
7. Northern Illinois
8. Stanford
9. Auburn
10. Clemson
11. Missouri
12. Oklahoma
13. Michigan State
14. UCF
15. Louisville
16. Oklahoma State
17. Miami
18. Houston
19. Ball State
20. LSU
21. Texas A&M
22. South Carolina
23. Notre Dame
24. Wisconsin
25. BYU

1. Alabama
2. Ohio St.
3. Florida St.
4. Oregon
5. Baylor
6. Stanford
7. Missouri
8. Clemson
9. Oklahoma
10. Michigan St.
11. Auburn
12. LSU
13. Oklahoma St.
14. South Carolina
15. Texas A&M
16. Miami, FL.
17 .Louisville
18. Fresno St.
19. Wisconsin
20. No. Illinois
21. Texas Tech
22. Mississippi
23. Arizona St.
24. UCLA
25. BYU

1. Florida St.
2. Oregon
3. Alabama
4. Baylor
5. Ohio St.
6. Missouri
7. Stanford
8. Oklahoma
9. Auburn
10. Clemson
11. South Carolina
12. LSU
13. Oklahoma St.
14. UCF
15. Notre Dame
16. Michigan St.
17. Arizona St.
18. Louisville
19. Miami (FL)
20. UCLA
21. Texas A&M
22. Fresno St.
23. Wisconsin
24. Northern Illinois
25. Ole Miss

Nice, brit. If Wisconsin wins Saturday they'll get a nice bump beating BYU. Any chance you can figure out with your formula if Wisconsin had beaten ASU?

Just a back-of-the-napkin calculation, but ASU would slide to 7th and Wiscy would jump to 10th.

I finally updated my spreadsheet, I need to tweak it more, but here are my rankings:


Alabama
Oregon
Ohio State
Florida State
Stanford
Baylor
Clemson
Oklahoma
Auburn
Missouri
Oklahoma State
LSU
Miami
Texas A&M
Fresno
South Carolina
Louisville
UCLA
Northern Illinois
Michigan State
UCF
Texas Tech
Wisconsin
Notre Dame
Arizona State

My Top 25:

1. Florida State
2. Oregon
3. Alabama
4. Ohio State
5. Baylor
6. Auburn
7. Stanford
8. Clemson
9. Oklahoma
10. Missouri
11. Miami, FL
12. LSU
13. Texas A&M
14. Louisville
15. Fresno State
16. South Carolina
17. Northern Illinois
18. UCLA
19. Wisconsin
20. Oklahoma State
21. Texas Tech
22. BYU
23. Central Florida
24. Virginia Tech
25. Texas